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Document created: 1 March 06
Air & Space Power Journal - Spring 2006

Douglas E. Lee
Maj Timothy Albrecht, USAF

At best, battle damage assessment (BDA)—a cumbersome process not conducive to current operations—yields a binary response (target destroyed or target not destroyed) and ignores other facets associated with today’s effects-based environment. To be useful, an assessment process must provide the combined force air component commander (CFACC) with facts that translate a sortie’s outcome into effects traceable from the tactical through the operational to the strategic level.

To a certain extent, the military has treated BDA as an afterthought rather than as a critical capability. The Department of Defense’s (DOD) force-transformation strategy offers an opportunity to change BDA into a network-centric, effects-based assessment (EBA) tool that provides near-real-time information to a CFACC. That information could include weapon-system, target, or socioeconomic status, as well as relative and cumulative changes in desired effects from the tactical through the strategic level.

With the DOD’s transformation strategy, -information-age military forces will become more network-centric, including improved information sharing that provides “actionable information at all levels of command.”¹ A key interoperability requirement levied on the service ensures that new systems—command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; weapons; and logistics—incorporate network Internet protocol (IP) standards.² Establishing an IP standard not only improves interoperability but also facilitates sharing of near-real-time information and gives the assessment process the capability to fuse intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors easily.

The jump from current to future processes requires a shift from assessing target destruction to assessing effects and actions performed (e.g., aircraft “presence” missions or neighbor-hood patrols) during the constructive or war-termination phase of combat. The processes of gathering information for the two assessments will resemble each other; however, those for assessing effects will vary. The primary tactical-assessment technique associated with “bombs on target” sorties entails verifying destruction of the objective, which attains the desired effect. If the target escapes destruction, the assessment process will resemble that of a “constructive” sortie. In both cases, one must identify and evaluate secondary or tertiary effects. For targets not clearly identified as destroyed, one can ascertain military utility in other ways (measuring secondary or tertiary effects), such as employing signals intelligence or human intelligence, to ensure achievement of the effect despite the absence of physical-destruction metrics.

EBA in the war-termination phase of combat is more problematic, primarily because of our lack of experience. Although a direct correlation usually exists between a military target’s purpose and its function, the socioeconomic effects stemming from a presence or humanitarian mission are not as well defined. This lack of definition for assessment purposes does not mean that effects do not exist. In the United States today, one observes the gathering of many effects as a matter of course (e.g., public-opinion polls, imports, exports, unemployment rates, crime statistics, and power production). Effects monitored during an operation include attacks on US troops, civilian deaths, reconstitution of public-service institutions, and—in Operation Iraqi Freedom—capture of a number of high-value targets (individuals included on the so-called most-wanted playing cards).

Assessing effects should not begin after execution of a mission; rather, the process should start with the development of strategic goals for a campaign. Effects should undergo refinement as one applies greater fidelity to the goals, resulting in a comprehensive assessment plan that translates actions (e.g., destroy, neutralize, support, and enable) into effects (e.g., prevent, deny, protect, and comfort). Understanding the relationship between a strategic goal and its associated effects employs resources more efficiently and reduces the assessment cycle.

Possible courses of action for the near term include (1) integrating effects assessment into every phase of the targeting cycle; (2) expanding intelligence collection and assessment requirements to include socioeconomic effects and linking those effects to actions; (3) developing a curriculum that educates Airmen about effects-based operations, focusing on destructive and constructive areas requiring secondary and tertiary effects; and (4) beginning an initiative to fuse sensors, identifying potential critical shortfalls in the war-termination phase. Long-term courses of action include (1) developing models patterned after simulation and strategy games such as SIMCITY or Civilization that will help forecast (in near-real time) effects from specific actions in the socioeconomic arena and (2) ensuring implementation of the DOD transformation mandate for IP standards in emerging systems, focusing on sensor fusion.

1. Transformation Planning Guidance (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 2003), 10, http://www.-defenselink.mil/brac/docs/transformationplanning apr03.pdf.

2. Ibid., 30.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

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